The Crockett Lab

how do we make moral decisions?and how do we learn whether others are moral?

Blaise Pascal described human beings as “the glory and scum of the universe”. Each of us carries blueprints for an astonishing range of social behaviors, from the heroic to the atrocious. The Crockett Lab seeks to understand this paradox by investigating the psychological and neural mechanisms of social decision-making and impression formation. Our approach integrates social psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience and philosophy. We use a range of methods including behavioral experiments, computational modeling, brain imaging, and pharmacology.